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US wields censorship baton: Kremlin warns net users vulnerable to Washington’s whims

According to the Kremlin, those who are zealous social media users run a high risk

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov Mikhail Metzel/TASS

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov

© Mikhail Metzel/TASS

MOSCOW, January 15. /TASS/. According to Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov, those who are zealous social media users run a high risk, he stated in an interview with the newspaper Argumenty I Fakty published on its website on Tuesday.

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"Those who spend a lot of time on social media run a great risk. How many Russian accounts were affected when the US suddenly thought that they were created for interfering in its presidential election? I am confident that there were numerous accounts that knew nothing about this election. But they were just blocked and that was that," he said, pointing to Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov’s Instagram page that was disabled and which had a vast number of subscribers.

Peskov compared these blocks on social media to the situation regarding the SWIFT system. "This situation is similar to that of SWIFT. America doesn’t like the way Iran behaves, so they disconnect banks from this system there. Where is the guarantee that Russia will not be disconnected tomorrow? Or the Europeans? And social media and economic systems are being politicized in the current framework system," the Kremlin spokesman said.

Peskov added that sooner or later the question will arise about whether to live by dictates or be blocked. "As a result, it’s all about sovereignty, be it personal or on a state level," he stressed.

The presidential spokesman noted that though Instagram is a brilliant invention, a user’s page is the property of the company and can closed at any moment. Peskov has never opened a Facebook and Odnoklassniki account and does not know what VKontakte looks like, he said.

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